Landscape Ethnoecology: Concepts of Biotic and Physical Space
ISBN: 9781845458041
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Berghahn Books
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter



Although anthropologists and cultural geographers have explored "place" in various senses, little cross-cultural examination of "kinds of place," or ecotopes, has been presented from an ethno-ecological perspective. In this volume, indigenous and local understandings of landscape are investigated in order to better understand how human communities relate to their terrestrial and aquatic resources. The contributors go beyond the traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) literature and offer valuable insights on ecology and on land and resources management, emphasizing the perception of landscape above the level of species and their folk classification. Focusing on the ways traditional people perceive and manage land and biotic resources within diverse regional and cultural settings, the contributors address theoretical issues and present case studies from North America, Mexico, Amazonia, tropical Asia, Africa and Europe.


Leslie Main Johnson is Associate Professor in the Centre for Social Science, Athabasca University, Alberta, Canada. Her publications include Trails of Story , Traveller's Path: Reflections on Ethnoecology and Landscape (Athabasca University Press, 2010), chapters on landscape in Landscape and Language , Benjamins 2011 and Ethnobiology , Wiley 2011," and articles in Human Ecology , Journal of Ethnobiology , Ecology of Food and Nutrition , Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine , and Botany .

Eugene S. Hunn is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington, Seattle. His books include Tzeltal Folk Zoology: The Classification of Discontinuities in Nature (Academic Press, 1977), Resource Managers: North American and Australian Hunter-Gatherers , co-edited with N. M. Williams (Westview, 1981), Nch'i-Wána, 'The Big River': Mid-Columbia Indians and their Land (University of Washington Press, 1990), and A Zapotec Natural History: Trees, Herbs, and Flowers, Birds, Beasts, and Bugs in the Life of San Juan Gbëë (University of Arizona Press, 2008).

Leslie Main Johnson is Associate Professor in the Centre for Social Science, Athabasca University, Alberta, Canada. Her publications include Trails of Story , Traveller's Path: Reflections on Ethnoecology and Landscape (Athabasca University Press, 2010), chapters on landscape in Landscape and Language , Benjamins 2011 and Ethnobiology , Wiley 2011," and articles in Human Ecology , Journal of Ethnobiology , Ecology of Food and Nutrition , Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine , and Botany .

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